Jacqueline Lawton

Jason Hornick

Shirley Serotsky

C. Stanley Photography

Otis Ramsey-Zoe

Otis Ramsey-Zoe

The seed of an idea for a play began to germinate during a reading series playwright Jacqueline E. Lawton attended in the fall of 2010.  It was “Backstage at the Lincoln,” a joint initiative between the Lincoln Theatre, Theater J, and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and Lawton was immediately inspired by the stories that examined the relationship between African-Americans and Jews.  “I told [Associate Artistic Director Shirley Serotsky] I’m going to write you a play,” remembers Lawton.  “And that is the cockiness of being… I can’t even say of being a 20-year-old because it was only a few years ago!  But I felt I could do that, I could get behind a story about black and Jewish relations.”

And get behind it she did; two and a half years later, Lawton’s The Hampton Years, a play born in that moment and later commissioned by Theater J, is now receiving its world premiere as part of Theater J’s Locally Grown Festival.

The Hampton Years tells the true story of Viktor Lowenfeld, a Jewish painter and professor who escaped Austria in 1938 and fled to the United States.  Lowenfeld and his family first landed in New York, and although he was offered a position at Harvard, he chose to teach at Virginia’s Hampton Institute (an all black college) instead.  It was there, in the art department that Lowenfeld himself fought to establish, that he met John Biggers and Samella Lewis, two students who would eventually become renowned artists due to Lowenfeld’s encouragement.

But their artistic path was one fraught with difficulty and intense discrimination, as Biggers, Lewis, and Lowenfeld were contending with a society unable to accept African-American artists into the mainstream.  “It’s fascinating to hear the Lowenfelds’ story of leaving [Austria], a place where they’d seen the unimaginable happen, and then they land in [Virginia], and they looked around and thought, this is the land of the free!” says Serotsky, who directs the world premiere.  “And they’re standing in the middle of Jim Crow South, which was also unlike anything they’d ever seen before.”

The Jim Crow South that Lowenfeld saw and that Lawton expertly brings to life was one where young black students fought the odds.  They struggled to create art and to find their voice, while society did all it could to prevent them from succeeding.  And although The Hampton Years is deeply rooted in history, the amazing strength and beauty of Lawton’s play is its ability to resonate strongly with today’s audience.  “The history is present in everything, and Jacqueline has the ability to bring to life this full story that had perhaps only previously been in our minds or in our hearts,” explains dramaturg Otis Ramsey-Zoe.  “She captures the theatricality, the everyday poetry in ways that are absolutely stunning.”

“The play is about why do we create the art we create, and this constant thing that Victor Lowenfeld is always saying, ‘You don’t create something just because it’s beautiful,’” Serotsky says.  “I think that speaks to the question that theatre companies are always asking: why are we doing this play?  Does it need to have a bigger reason than it’s pretty or entertaining?  Theater J rarely does plays just because they’re beautiful; we have our sights always set on a bigger mission, about how a play speaks to social issues and world history and geopolitical issues, how it fits into the world’s story.”

The Hampton Years was both written for and reflects the mission of Theater J.  But what’s more, like Biggers and Lewis, who became brilliant artists with the help of a great teacher, Lawton’s smart and savvy and richly researched play is successful partially due to the support from the Locally Grown Festival.  This “initiative that shares the voices that come from our backyard,” as Serotsky notes, gives DC artists the precious time and space to explore and express their own voice, an initiative that should be replicated nation-wide.  “I feel like this is the most cared for play that’s being produced right now,” exclaims Lawton.  “Otis and Shirley are phenomenal advocates for this script, and we have an assistant director and two student assistant dramaturges and a supportive staff and the Theater J Council…I have an army of people who believe in me.  That’s huge.”

To read more about the Locally Grown Festival and other new play development programs in the Washington region, check out Anne Meredith McCaw’s “Let’s Play” Series here.  

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